Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Tuesday Teaser - Losing His Wings

Losing His Wings, another story that was once my monthly freebie. My only angel and demon story to date, but I'll have to remedy that some day...

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At times, Rowan wished it could have been that easy to project lust into Samuel’s thoughts. He was an attractive man—or rather, he looked like an attractive man. He was anything but a man, of course, just like Rowan was anything but a woman. Those were merely the forms they had chosen for themselves. Samuel’s form had been the same for as long as Rowan had known him. Rowan’s, on the other hand, changed with fleeting moods or the color of the sky on a certain day. Sometimes, a woman’s curves suited her best. At other moments, a man’s strength was what he needed.

She had been holding on to her female form for a little while; ever since she had noticed how hard Samuel tried not to look at her when she wore this body. It was… intriguing that her form could trouble him. He had never seemed particularly bothered when she tried to upset him by parading around him without clothes on, but apparently things had changed. Rowan enjoyed looking at Samuel, and she would have enjoyed doing a lot more than look. If only he weren’t always so serious and uptight…

She tried to imagine what he would look like if he laughed, head thrown back and his long, pale throat exposed, and what he would sound like, too. She was sure his laugh would be pure warmth, melted caramel and fudge swirling together.

As though summoned by her thoughts, Samuel appeared a few paces ahead of Rowan and Tanya. Still caught in her fantasy, Rowan grinned at him and licked her lips. His eyebrows drew together in a tight frown as soon as his gaze fell on her.

“What are you doing here?” Samuel snapped, his eyes darting from her to Tanya.

Rowan chuckled. That was a silly question, especially coming from Samuel. Hadn’t they done this often enough? “Exactly what you think I am doing.”

Samuel’s eyebrows drew closer together, and he scrutinized Rowan as he fell into step with her, as though trying to decipher lies on her lips. He sometimes seemed to think any word that Rowan said could only be a lie. He should have known, however, that the truth was often much more effective.

“Jeffrey isn’t here,” Samuel pointed out. “So what do you hope to do?”

“You tell me,” Rowan shot back. “You’re here, too, aren’t you?”

A flicker of Samuel’s eyes toward Tanya made it clear what it was he had intended to do, but Rowan had already known.

Strictly speaking, that wasn’t entirely true. Having touched Tanya’s mind first, Rowan would now always have an affinity with her. If Rowan wasn’t around, Samuel or anyone else might try to influence her and succeed, but if they were both trying at the same time, Rowan’s suggestions or images would always be the ones Tanya would see and hear more clearly. It was an unspoken agreement between Samuel’s kind and Rowan’s that whenever two of them found themselves by the same person at the same time, the one who had touched that person’s mind first was not to be challenged directly.

Rowan laughed. “Is that what you think? That I’m torturing her mind? How would that help?” Not that Rowan had any problem with doing such a thing, of course, but in this case other paths were much more likely to work. “No, I’m offering her pleasure, not pain.”

She stepped in front of Samuel and forced him to an abrupt halt. She looked at him lasciviously, enjoying that slight start, quickly controlled, that meant Samuel was uncomfortable.

“I could show you,” she whispered, right against Samuel’s ear. Samuel might have turned to stone for his complete lack of reaction. “Only in the interest of full disclosure, of course. I’m sure you wouldn’t enjoy it at all.”

Samuel would never allow it, just like Rowan herself would never allow anyone from the other side to access her mind. Still, Rowan sometimes wondered what she would see, if she ever got a glimpse of Samuel’s thoughts. Surely, they couldn’t be entirely pure and chaste, could they? What kind of life would that be?

“I don’t need you to show me,” Samuel said coolly, taking a step to the side and away from Rowan. For a second, he looked as though he would go after Tanya, but he seemed to change his mind and stood his ground. “I know your tricks. I just don’t understand how you can think that sex is always the answer.”

His tone reflected both contempt and incredulity, and it annoyed Rowan. After all this time, hadn’t Rowan proved to him that she knew what she was doing—and that she was extremely good at it?

“Isn’t it always the answer?” Rowan asked, her grin turning almost savage.

She wished she had been in her male body, and at the instant the thought crossed her mind, she seized it, allowing her body and clothes to change in a swirl of light and shadows. In this shape, Rowan had an inch or two in height over Samuel, and looking down at him always felt like it added weight to Rowan’s words.

“Not that you’d know, of course,” Rowan added in a low, deep voice, and clucked his tongue. Shaking his head, he affected an air of pity. In truth, he did pity Samuel a little for what Samuel didn’t know—what he had never experienced. “How are you supposed to fight the ravages of lust when you don’t understand it? That seems like a major flaw in your maker’s planning.”

“Our maker,” Samuel said immediately, always quick to remind Rowan that they had come from the same place, after all. He raised his chin and gave Rowan a defiant look. “And I do understand lust.”

“Do you, now?” Tilting his head slightly as he considered Samuel, Rowan tapped a finger over his lips. “That’s interesting.”

Rowan opened his mind, found people passing nearby. Two women and a man, all complete strangers. It didn’t matter. It also didn’t matter that all three of them were involved in other relationships, that one of the women wasn’t twenty yet and the other almost three times older. Rowan pushed images at the three of them, flooded their minds with flashes of naked flesh, grinding bodies, caressing hands and lips.

What Rowan did on a daily basis was all about control: light touches on receptive minds, alluding to possibilities, lighting up the way rather than leading his subjects down the path he wanted them to follow. They had to make their own choices so that there would be no regret, no guilt, and especially no backpedaling afterwards.

But this? This was crude. There was no finesse to it, no art. As soon as Rowan stopped, the humans he had caught in his web would pull apart and wonder what had gone through them; they might even forget it had happened altogether, the experience too far removed from their lives for their minds to wrap around it. And yet, crude or not, long-lasting or not, Rowan’s little trick was effective.

Pushed by instincts and needs they could neither control nor comprehend, the three of them barely had enough presence of mind to stumble into a side alley, where they wouldn’t be completely in the open—where a passing police car might not stop them too soon. Almost but not quite hidden behind a large metal dumpster, the two women tore at each other’s blouses, mouths crashing together for a violent, breathless kiss while the man opened his zipper and pulled out his cock without bothering to shove his pants or boxers down his legs. The women drew him to them, fingers entwining on his cock while his own hands reached for every curve they had to offer as though unable to choose one and stay there.

Rowan didn’t bother turning around to look at his work, and kept his eyes on Samuel instead. He couldn’t possibly ignore what was happening, and Rowan did catch Samuel’s eyes flicking to the show once or twice, but the extent of his reaction was simply to cross his arms and look completely unfazed.

“I understand lust,” Samuel said again. “I also understand that love is always more powerful. Flesh on flesh, it’s little more than animals rutting.”

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